Writing this paper has enabled me to bring two sides of my life into the same focus; I was a gardener before I was an archivist and now that I am no longer working as an archivist, I'm still a gardener.

Gardening is in fact not unlike being an archivist; the two occupations have activities in common; You weed accessions , I weed flowerbeds,. I arrange plants; you arrange files; , you describe series; and I describe -- ah yes, just what do I, and my fellow gardeners describe? Because this is what we are considering this morning -- the records gardeners keep, where they are, what's in them and how does this help us to preserve garden history and how could we do this better. I shall not, in this distinguished and entirely-dedicated-to-the-preservation-of-records company, go into the question of why garden records should be preserved. But before we go any further there is one idea that I think I should lay to rest: the garden will not remain as either your monument or its own.

Only the gardens of immensely rich and enduring families -- the house of Windsor, the Cavendishes, or wealthy institutions, St John's College, Oxford, the various Physic Gardens, Kew, Wisley, may last. Private gardens, however, are another story: the late Archbishop Sexton's garden is a parking lot now, and a school playground. This slide shows Vern Ahier's garden, probably about the same date; they dumped an apartment building on most of that one. And even supposing that the developers don't get it, and your descendants manage to keep the brambles at bay, the very plants you loved and cherished, especially if you are a rock gardener, will change out of all recognition .... those dear little evergreens that looked so cute are twenty feet tall now, which substantially changes the outline of a rock garden.

So on to the written or pictorial record. First, the printed record. This is copious and extends in time from Roman times via Walafrhid Strabo in the ninth century, the nuns of Nun Cotam (late for Compline because they were tending their flowers -- unfortunately the Bishop's Visitation record doesn't say what flowers) in the fifteenth century, tulipmania in the seventeenth to the present day: books, seed catalogues, periodicals, weekly monthly, quarterly, they pour from the presses; I counted nine gardening magazines on the rack in the drugstore the other day. There is even, or was a Canadian Journal of Horticultural History. All this has its uses; if your researcher is trying to write a novel in which the crucial scene takes place in a garden in 1930 the heroine must not be found cultivating a patch of Man in the Moon marigolds, which did not make their appearance until the 1950s. And the young man who cuts my grass pointed out, the ads will tell you what mechanical aids were available at what date. But when it comes to the reality of what did happen, rather than what should have happened, then garden writers must be admitted to have a serious flaw: they are all inveterate optimists, incurable wishful thinkers. "The seeds will germinate" -oh yes? "Supplies of whatever may readily be obtained" Uh huh. "Cuttings may easily be rooted" Oh indeed? Believing them is like taking the pictures in Nurserymen's catalogues as a true representation of the flower they depict.

So setting aside the printed record, what is there out there, what's in it, and what do we wish was in it? Ending, since I've reached the age at which one experiences a strong impulse to tell people what to do, with a few recommendations to gardeners about what to record, and to archivists about what to keep.

The Federal and Provincial Governments support horticultural research stations where, no doubt, they keep meticulous records, but experimental station records are a bit heavy duty for our purpose. Provincial governments maintain plantings at their parks, of a kind familiar to all those who visit the Provincial Archives, because there is one outside its front door -- what I would call conscientious and hard-wearing, comprising plants that are native to the Province and that will survive all summer even if it doesn't rain. .

Municipal governments at least in this area, garden colourfully and with enthusiasm. Vancouver has deposited its Board of Parks and Recreation records at the Vancouver City Archives, and amongst much other material there are landscape plans from 1912-1976; I haven't been able to look at these. Victoria City Archives has the Parks Supervisor's records -- his reports to the Council -- from the early 1930s to c.1970. What a fascinating read. The poignant story of the mysterious disappearance of no less than eight cygnets; the successful construction of a comfort station which was "much admired by others in the field of Parks Management". -Parks management it seems, involves more than garden history, but we get that as well: from the lists of plants donated by friends of the parks in the 1930s (very nice plants they were too) to 1957 when "the massing of thousands of flowers in solid displays of colour created a great deal of interest from passing motorists". Saanich has some superb herbaceous borders, but according to my informant, not much record of how they have developed.

Moving on to other institutions; both UBC and UVic have university gardens and both have deposited their records in the appropriate archives. Looking at these led me to the melancholy conclusion that any garden run by a Committee is apt to generate about 19 files of spirited discussion, in correspondence and Minutes, about who is responsible for what, to one file of landscape plans and plant lists. UVic does have some rather charming notebooks -- the kind that have tables of weights and measures and the endings of Latin declensions in the back cover -- with handwritten lists of plants with their qualities and requirements, but I was not sure that they referred to the UVic gardens. They also have a list of where every single rhodo in the gardens came from. And excellent planting plans.

Garden Societies. I inquired around a bit. The Victoria Horticultural Society has very properly deposited their records at the Victoria City Archives, and I spent a happy couple of mornings with them.. The Rock and Alpine Garden Society has four bankers boxes in storage. Both these suffer to some extent from the same problem as University archives -- a superabundance of Minutes On the other hand VHS has records of which garden won the Best Garden Prize that they offer, from the mid-1920s up to quite recently, (though as we have already seen the garden is no record of its earlier self). They have all their Show catalogues -what classes increased, which were dropped, which subdivided- an interesting guide to gardening tastes, and an almost complete series of their Garden Notes that are sent out each month. (These are rather "garden writing" -see above- than garden records.)

The Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Garden Society (VIRAGS) has three items of interest: the slide library, which has pictures not only of notable gardeners, but also general garden views and close-ups of individual plants; also a hand-written list by Doris Page from 1969-1971 of all the plants then being grown by members; and the Parlour Show records. These last are useful because they say what plants were being grown by whom, though quite a lot of them were clearly Alpine House rather than garden plants.

Which brings us to private gardens and their records if any. Perhaps I should have put Butcharts Garden under institutional gardens, but when I ventured to inquire about what archives they had I was told very firmly that this is a private family archive. But then I went out there one cold day in March and found an "historical exhibit" in the lovely warm living rooms of the old Butchart house. There were, it is true, a lot of photos of the cement works, but there were also photos of the garden being made, lists of plants to be ordered for the garden, and notes on the plants in the garden, which suggests that there is a lot more there for the right person to see. One thing it made me realise was what an immense boon colour photography has been to garden records; the cement works come out well in black and white, the evergreens look ok, but what, oh what flower do these little white blobs represent?

Royal Roads, now University, but the private garden of Hatley Castle when the grounds were laid out, has many records of the original gardens: landscape plans of the Italian Garden, planting plans for the first Japanese garden, and their present head gardener is a descendant of the original gardener, though he might not be pleased to be thought of as archival.

Point Ellice House, the most outstanding private garden archive in Victoria, we shall hear about from Mr Hume. But the average private garden, what can we hope for in the way of records from them? The provincial Archives has a gem: 4 pages and an envelope; it's a purchase order c.1930 for alpine plants for what must have been an immense rock garden, twenty four hundred plants, on W. Saanich Road, but this, and the owner's name, Major W. H. Parr, is all we know about this garden.

Most gardeners do in fact create records, but do they keep them? I knew a man who kept meticulous seed records --How many, where from, what planting mix, but when I wanted to borrow these to show you, he said "Oh those, I destroyed them; I found I never looked at them." Is this what happens to most gardeners' records?

I suspect that what is most likely to survive is the collection of photographs, but these too have their shortcomings; yes, that's a dianthus, but what's this? If you are close enough to identify the plant, you can't see where it is in the garden; if the shape of the garden is clear, what are those little pink blobs?

So what do we need? Planting plans, seed lists, nursery orders, planting plans revisited five years later (Oh dear, what became of that?) and photos, both close ups and general views. Keep a garden Journal. Record changes to your planting plans. Save your seed lists, especially the ones that actually came up. Take pictures of your triumphs. Take pictures from the same place year after year. Indoctrinate your heirs with the necessity of preserving all this. If possible, teach them to be gardeners, it's the kindest thing you can do for them.

And should your archives receive an accession full of lists of Latin names of plants, please, please, don't throw them out.

* Dr. Elizabeth Hyde began her career as a medieval historian but got distracted along the way by her garden. She found looking after the Anglican Diocese of B.C. Archives in Victoria to be a happy compromise.

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© 2001 Archives Association of British Columbia